


Hold On

by doop_doop



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Time Skip, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21993007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doop_doop/pseuds/doop_doop
Summary: Felix and Ashe reunite after five years apart.A lot has changed, but the most important things are the same as they've always been.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89





	Hold On

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what Felix actually did during the TS in canon, so a few statements here may be incorrect, I'm sorry.

Ashe has been changed by the years. He’s gotten taller, his hair longer, his face more a man’s than a boy’s now; he has a confidence evident in the way he carries himself that the Ashe of five years ago lacked. He makes Felix feel stagnant, as if in the years between their meetings he’s just been standing still. 

Ashe takes in everything with a grace Felix himself lacks - the state of the Boar Prince, news of Dedue’s death, the half-ruined monastery, the sad lack of supplies. Maybe he goes somewhere else and cries on his own, but Felix doesn’t see that - Felix sees nothing but the happy face he shows the world.

It’s a handful of days before the two of them can talk properly, one on one. Felix finds himself happy to be back in this life again; he’d gotten tired of living cooped up in an estate while the world fell to pieces around him. Interesting seeing who among them endures, and who thrives. Ashe, like Felix, does the latter.

_ He is more alive than I remember ever seeing him, _ Felix thinks, as Ashe launches arrows into target after target. Not bullseyes, not quite - but if it were a skull he was aiming at, it would have broken through regardless. As long as you kill, there’s no need to land the shot dead center.

Felix watches silently, his own weapon forgotten in his hand. When Ashe runs out of arrows, he turns to Felix and gives him a broad grin. “I haven’t lost my touch, have I?”

Felix almost jumps in surprise - he didn’t know his observation was known, even perhaps thought himself sneaky. “Apparently not,” he says, fidgeting.

“Were you going to train too, or just watch me all afternoon?”

_ When did he learn to tease like this? _ Felix wonders, frowning. He doesn’t miss the flustered, boyish Ashe from before, but does wonder where that person went, what changed him into this confident man. 

“Go collect your arrows, so I can shoot too,” Felix says. 

“Come help me. It’ll go faster.”

As they pull Ashe’s arrows out of the target, their hands keep bumping against one another. One of them is clumsy, and Felix can’t figure out which - until he glances over and sees the glint in Ashe’s eyes, and it hits him like a blow. It’s  _ not  _ accidental, but whether Ashe is teasing him or something else, Felix has no idea.

After dinner that evening, Ashe meets Felix on the way out, pulling him aside to murmur in his ear: “I’ve got something to speak to you about - would you join me in my room?” 

“Now?”

“Whenever you’re free.” That smile again, playful, coy, almost more than Felix can bear. “As soon as you’re able.”

Felix doesn’t waste time, heading to Ashe’s room just about as fast as his legs can take him. Ashe looks surprised to see him there so soon. Felix wonders if it’s obvious he’s out of breath. 

“What did you want to talk about?” he asks, shutting the door behind him.

Ashe is sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning back with his weight on his hands - a confident pose, the position of someone not afraid to take up space. “Just wanted to talk.”

Felix knows that’s a lie, but nods anyways. “Alright.”

“Five years ago…” Ashe tilts his head back to look at the ceiling. Felix watches how the hair slides over his forehead, not just longer than before but softer-looking, too. The sun has already set, but Ashe has candles lit, turning his hair from silver to yellow-gold. “Five years ago, when we were classmates together, I had a crush on you. Did you ever notice?” 

Felix blinks, for a long second not comprehending. “No,” he says at last. He is still standing in the doorway, wondering what’s going on - wondering whether this is all some vicious joke, or a favor dropped in his lap.

“If you had noticed,” Ashe says, “what would you have thought?”

He raises his head again to meet Felix’s eyes, and Felix thinks:  _ This conversation is important. _ He doesn’t know what makes it so, but Ashe’s voice, despite its surface playfulness, has an edge. It gets Felix’s attention as much as if someone had grabbed him by the chin and held his face in place. 

“If I had noticed,” Felix echoes. “Hm…”

“Or if someone had pointed it out to you. Or if I had told you.”

“I would have been… flattered,” Felix says slowly. “And glad.”

“Glad?”

“Because…” It’s still stupidly hard to say, despite Ashe more or less leading him there by the nose. “Because it would have been reciprocated.” 

“You had a crush on me back then, too?”

Felix nods. 

“Funny,” Ashe says. “We felt the same way, and we never knew.” 

Felix, not finding it quite as funny, says nothing. His heart is beating like a prey animal’s, fast and loud. Ashe can probably hear it from across the room, Felix finds himself thinking - but it is a silly thought, a fanciful one.

“What would your reaction be if someone told you I had a crush on you now?” Ashe says. 

His gaze is too direct, and Felix looks away. “The same, except - also disbelief.”

“Why?”

“That it stayed, all these years - that you could have changed so much, and still…”

He trails off. He doesn’t dare look up yet. The Felix of before would have said it’s not possible for Ashe to play a trick this mean on anyone - but the Felix of now doesn’t know Ashe anymore, not really. The years have changed him, and Felix hasn’t had time to properly plumb the depths to see just how different he is.

“It might have faded,” Ashe says, “but seeing you again brought it all back.” 

“At a time like this,” Felix says, “how can you be so carefree that you think of things like  _ crushes? _ I thought you’d changed.” 

He lifts his eyes at last to meet Ashe’s gaze. Ashe isn’t offended; his expression is gentle and neutral, certainly not how someone should look immediately after confessing. It makes Felix mad, to feel his own stupid heart riled up and aching and to have Ashe as calm as can be.

“We’ve both changed,” Ashe says. “But more things have stayed the same than have changed, I think.” 

“Do you really think that’s true?”

“Enough things have stayed the same for me to know.”

“We’ve only been reunited two days.”

“I don’t care about that. It doesn’t matter. _ I know.”  _

The truth - the truth Felix had tried to bury for five years, without success - is that he’d known all along. He’d known that Ashe’s gaze lingered on him in class, that Ashe spoke adoringly of him to his friends, that Ashe emulated him and wanted to be by his side and wanted everything from him. No one had told him, but Felix, despite what some people seemed to think, was not blind to the behavior of others, even as a blank-minded, training-obsessed teenager. Felix had known, and had felt a similar thing budding in himself - a desire to be near Ashe, to spend time with him and train with him, to look on him more than anyone else - and had told himself, over and over again:  _ not yet, not yet. Wait.  _ For what, he didn’t know - only that he wasn’t ready for whatever Ashe was ready for.

And war had happened, and then came five years of knowing nothing, of rotting away while his friends were exiled or slaughtered. Five years of hating himself for waiting and staying silent. 

If Ashe isn’t sure - if Ashe changes his mind now - Felix doesn’t think he can stand losing this again, not when it’s so close. But at the same time he finds himself sickened for wanting this so badly when there are so many things around them broken and wrong. What can a crush fix? What good can a crush do for anyone? 

“How do you  _ know  _ you know?” Felix hisses, knowing he’s making no sense. “How can you be sure?” 

“I know my own feelings,” Ashe says. “For years, I regretted not telling you when I had the chance. I vowed to make it right as soon as I possibly could, if my feelings for you were unchanged.”

“And they are unchanged?.” 

“...no,” Ashe says. “Not exactly. They changed because I changed, but they aren’t different fundamentally. Look, Felix, I don’t want to lose you, but I know we’re going to fight a lot of battles. Any of us could die at any time. I learned from my old mistakes, and important things like this shouldn’t be kept as secrets anymore, not when our lives are so fragile. Whether you feel the same for me or not, I want you to know that my feelings for you are still strong. They haven’t faded with time at all.” 

“Listen to you,” Felix said, turning his head to the side. “Sounding like a hero in a storybook, even now.” 

“Are you - Felix, are you alright?”

“Shut up,” Felix says. Ashe is rising and stepping towards him, Ashe’s hands are on his cheeks. Ashe’s thumbs wipe away his tears. Everything about it is horribly embarrassing, and Felix wants to back away and leave; but the tenderness with which Ashe holds him is stronger than a cage, and Felix cannot break free. 

“I missed you,” Ashe says simply, and pulls Felix into a hug. Ashe isn’t tiny anymore - they’re the same height, just about. He’s solid and broad in Felix’s arms, a man instead of a still-growing boy. “Felix, I missed you so much.”

“Shut up,” Felix says, his voice quavering. “Shut up, Ashe.”

Ashe only draws him closer. Felix is lucky he himself hasn’t changed much, that Ashe knows him so well - knows that  _ shut up _ doesn’t mean what it sounds like. Felix’s throat seems to have been welded shut, making it hard to swallow; but one of Ashe’s hands is stroking up and down his back, the touch steady and comforting, and Felix feels his body relaxing beneath it. He chokes out a sob, tries to muffle it in Ashe’s shoulder.

“Trust me,” Ashe whispers, his breath warm on Felix’s ear. “Please trust me, I won’t hurt you.” 

Stupid, that Ashe talks to Felix like this - like he’s a child needing to be soothed. Stupider still, that it works. “Fine,” Felix says, and in response Ashe hugs him tighter, holding so firmly that Felix almost expects to hear his back crack. Then Ashe lets him go, they step apart, and for a long moment they do nothing but stare at one another in silence.

“It’s probably a bad idea,” Felix says, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand. He feels cold now that he’s not being touched. “In the middle of this awful war… It won’t be anything more than a distraction.” 

“I think - I think it will be good for me,” Ashe says. He is smiling, though it’s tentative - a flash of his younger, shy self, Felix thinks. “I think having you by my side will give me strength.”

Felix doesn’t have it in him to protest anymore. He’s out of arguments - not that he wanted to win this debate in the first place, not really, but he had to throw  _ something _ at Ashe, like a test, to see if he’d fold under the slightest pressure. Thank the Goddess he hadn’t - Felix should have expected that, but, these days, he can’t find it in himself to hope for much of anything.

Instead of speaking, Felix takes a step forward and takes Ashe’s hand. It’s warm and thickly callused, a warrior’s hand, a soldier’s. Felix is smart enough to see how unbelievably lucky the two of them are. He feels on the verge of tears again; it’s a testament to the strangeness of the past few days, which have dredged up everything he thought he’d safely tucked away. All he can do is hold Ashe’s hand and stand there beside him. Having that hand at all, having Ashe at his side, is more than enough, more than Felix dared to hope for. All he can do now is hold on.

**Author's Note:**

> [\- my twitter](https://twitter.com/doop_doop2)   
> 


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